Hí everybody, Earlier today I was testing some code in ghci with ":set +s" enabled. For some reason I changed an if-then-else expressions to guards and I was surprised to find out that the memory usage declined significantly (around 20%). Here is a function call output using if-then-else: λ> inarow1 ls 1 (1.28 secs, 401,690,400 bytes) And here is a function call output using guards: λ> inarow1 ls 1 (1.18 secs, 313,690,576 bytes) I ran both versions many times and this difference was consistent. Could you help me understand why? Thanks Miguel P.S. I don't think it should matter but maybe it does, here is the function definition: inarow1 :: forall a. Eq a => [a] -> Int inarow1 [] = 0 inarow1 (x:[]) = 1 inarow1 ls = aux 0 1 ls where aux :: Int -> Int -> [a] -> Int aux top curr (x:y:[]) = max top $ if x == y then curr + 1 else curr aux top curr (x:xs@(y:ys)) | x == y = aux top (curr + 1) xs | otherwise = aux (max top curr) 1 xs And the list: ls = [1..1000000]